The factory workers in Lowell raised much controversy in the eighteenth century when "modernization" was taking place in New England. Two concepts were widely held in regards to women at that time. First was the concept of "republican motherhood" which instructed women to stay home and raise children who would be virtuous assets to the republican government. Second, the concept of the "cult of true womanhood" called for women to be pious, pure, submissive, and domestic. The movement of girls to work in the Lowell factories challenged both these ideals as the girls were no longer living at home, which was considered their proper place to be as the world would strip them